Vikings (31 page)

In the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford I spent some time marvelling at the little wonder that is the Alfred Jewel. Found in 1693 in North Petherton in Somerset, and made sometime in the ninth century during the reign of Alfred the Great, it is a potent demonstration of the wealth of a nation in the making. Just two and a half inches long, it is a teardrop of filigree gold crafted to hold a single, glass-smooth piece of rock crystal. The crystal acts as a magnifying lens for the tiny image of a man held beneath it. Fashioned from cloisonné enamel, it is thought to represent either ‘sight’ or Christ in Majesty. The notion of sight is related to the interpretation of the Alfred Jewel, by some at least, as the handle for a pointer or
aestel.
A thin shaft of some suitably precious material, like ivory, would have been held in the mouth of the stylised representation of a beast’s head that forms the point of the teardrop. Around the edge of the piece are incised the Old English words, AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN – Alfred ordered me to be made.

It is known that King Alfred commissioned a number of such tools – used for pointing out the lines, word by word, in holy manuscripts – and had them sent to each of his bishops along with translations into English of the
Regula Pastoralis
, or ‘Book of Pastoral Care’. Alfred championed the literacy of his clergy so as to improve the transmission of the Word of God to his subjects.

Whatever its function – and explanations have ranged from
the centrepiece for an elaborate headdress or crown, to the jewel for a pendant – its real importance lies in all else that it represents. The art of the Anglo-Saxons is regarded as one of the greatest contributions from these islands – ever – to the history of artistic accomplishment. Tiny bauble though it is, the Alfred Jewel is almost an arrogant demonstration, not just of one artist’s skill but also of the abundant surplus of the society that produced him. Perhaps it was indeed the handle for a pointer and if so, then that such care and expense might be lavished upon an inconsequential trinket surely leaves us wondering what else glittered all around in England before the Vikings came.

Elsewhere in the same gallery of the Ashmolean other treasures of the period are on display. Gold and jewel-encrusted crosses and finery glimmer sumptuously from behind theft-proof glass. The contents of any one case are enough to captivate the viewer and yet they are only the fragments of what once was; crumbs from the masters’ tables. By far the bulk of it was gone long ago, melted down and made into other things, and all we have are whatever few pieces were buried in graves, for safe-keeping in times of strife. And so medieval England must have seemed especially tempting, out there on the far side of the North Sea and weighed down with gold and precious stones, as well as with treasuries stuffed to the rafters with coins and bullion. Look upon the Alfred Jewel and it is greed that is reflected by the polished quartz. No wonder Vikings came prowling.

I had long enjoyed the notion of the Great Army having set sail from Norway in their fleet of dragon ships, but it seems they travelled to their original landing in East Anglia from entirely the opposite direction. Alex Woolf is one historian who believes they arrived in England from bases established a decade and a half before in Ireland. The Ivarr who died in 873 and who was recorded, in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, as king
of the heathens of all Ireland and Britain, may well have been the Viking at the head of the 3,000 warriors. This then would be the same Ivarr who, alongside his brother-in-arms Olaf of Norway, had established himself first of all in Dublin during the 850s.

If it is a small world now, in many ways it was smaller then. A man who had made himself king in one land had no reason to stop there and so when the wealth of England became irresistible, it may well have been Ivarr that set sail into the east with all the strength he could muster.

By the end of 867 the Great Army had turned on Mercia, the third of the English kingdoms, and it appears they made peaceful terms with the population there. The available records paint a picture of the Vikings always on the move at this time, roaming up and down the English countryside, seemingly at will. Northumbria was already enthralled. By 869 the kingdom of the East Anglians had collapsed under the weight of them too and their king, Edmund, was dead by Viking hands. Only Wessex had evaded their attentions, but from 870 onwards it was in their sights as well and the scene of numerous battles.

Always the paucity of detail in the annals and in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle makes it hard to picture the reality of all that was going on. Repeatedly we read about the Vikings ‘making peace’ with the kingdoms they threaten but it is anyone’s guess who actually paid the price. If kings had to hand over bullion, coins and treasures – along with foodstuffs – then we can be sure that royal suffering was transferred down the hierarchy until the poorest folk ended up bearing the burden, as usual.

The town of Repton is a quiet place today, somewhat off the beaten track, and yet to the Vikings it represented the key to the kingdom of Mercia. A monastic community had been established by the River Trent in the middle of the seventh century and several Mercian kings had been buried there. St Wystan’s in
Repton is every inch the perfect English church. When I visited the place the porch was stacked high with copies of the parish newsletter, awaiting delivery, and a gardener and her young children were tending the flowers and shrubs in the churchyard.

Much of what is visible now is fifteenth-century but within the fabric of the building, fossilised there, are fragments of much older masonry. Some parts of the eastern end are old indeed, and in his classic work
The Buildings of England
the great architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner described it as ‘one of the most precious survivals of Anglo-Saxon architecture in England’.

Worth a visit for its own sake is the Anglo-Saxon crypt, built during the reign of King Aethelbald in the first half of the eighth century, and accessible now via a flight of steps leading down from the left-hand side of the altar. The last few stones are deeply worn, as though by fast-flowing water, but this was a river made by pilgrims’ footsteps. It was a natural spring that first made the site sacred and the original structure was a baptistery. Only later was it turned into a mausoleum, but in time it became a resting place for the bones of kings and at least one saint. Wystan, the grandson of another King of Mercia, Wiglaf, was murdered in 849 and his bones placed in the crypt at Repton. Soon there was talk of miracles and the flow of pilgrims began.

It is a tiny space, just 16 feet square and 10 feet high and divided into nine square bays. The vaulted ceiling – not to mention the weight of the later Anglo-Saxon chancel above – is supported by four stone columns. Added in the ninth century, they are carved like barley sugar sticks, with spirals coiling around and down from capital to base. Some say they copy the style of the pillars of St Peter’s original tomb in Rome. John Betjeman visited and described the atmosphere as ‘Holy air encased in stone’.

The Great Heathen Army arrived in the autumn of 873 and promptly drove the incumbent king, Burgred, into exile. Knowing what was good for him, he left Repton and Mercia, and eventually fled all the way to Rome in search of final salvation. The Vikings made a puppet king of Ceolwulf, one of Burgred’s retainers, and then settled down for the winter. Pagans they surely were but the spiritual – and therefore political – significance of seizing a royal church-settlement was not lost on them. That they seem to have sought power and even legitimacy by association with one of Christianity’s holy places suggests the start of a longer-term strategy. From early on it seems the Vikings understood the political advance to be made by exploiting the faith of western Europe.

Repton was also of a straightforward strategic importance that would have mattered just as much to the intruders. Sitting proud upon a bluff of high ground on the south side of the river, the settlement commanded a junction of routes and crossing points. Control of Repton conferred control of Mercia itself and with this in mind the Vikings set about modifying the site until they had created a long port. Having arrived by river, they made their moored boats into one side, the northern side of their fort. Next they created a D-shaped rampart and ditch that incorporated the church itself into the southern side, opposite the river, so that the doors through the building’s long walls served as a massively defended entrance to their fortification. As a statement of intent, it was emphatic.

Repton also marked a turning point in the life of the Great Heathen Army. Something happened there in 873 that prompted the splitting of the force into two distinct units – and an explanation for the schism may well have been revealed by archaeological excavations of the area between 1974 and 1988.

In addition to revealing the design and structure of the Viking fort, archaeologists Martin and Birthe Biddle also excavated a
number of pagan burials in and around the churchyard. One of the most significant was what was effectively a double grave, containing the skeletons of one man aged around 20, and a second aged between 35 and 45. The elder, and evidently more important, of the pair had died an especially violent death. Felled by two catastrophic injuries to his skull, he also suffered a wound to his leg that would have severed his femoral artery. There are even suggestions he may have been disembowelled. Known today as the Repton Warrior, he was buried with full Viking honours.

His sword, in a fleece-lined, wooden scabbard, was laid by his side, along with two knives, one of which appeared designed to fold in half, like a penknife. A decorated copper buckle revealed he had been wearing a belt, presumably of leather, around his waist. On top of the sword scabbard was an iron key, and around his neck a little silver Thor’s hammer. Thor was the warrior’s god and by making a keepsake of his famous weapon – the thunder-bringing hammer called Mjölnir – fighting men like the Repton Warrior hoped to ensure his blessing in battle. This little artefact, more than any other item in the grave, simple and roughly made though it is, proclaims him as a Viking. And, after all, Odin himself had decreed that all warriors must be buried or burnt along with everything of value they owned. The hoped-for destination of every Viking warrior was Valhalla, where he would fight all day alongside the gods and feast with them throughout the night, entertained by the Valkyries. It was a prerequisite that such men be laid down with swords, knives, belts and anything else they might need to look the part alongside Odin and Thor.

More mysterious was the discovery, between his thighs, of a boar’s tusk and, lower down his body, a bag or box containing a bone from a jackdaw. As well as being disembowelled, he may have been castrated post-mortem, and the tusk might have
been provided to complete him, make him appear whole and masculine once more.

The younger man buried beside him had also died violently, as a result of a single heavy blow delivered to the right side of his head with a sword or an axe. He had an iron knife by his side and the Biddles thought it at least likely he had been a companion of the Repton Warrior – perhaps a weapon-bearer – and that since both had died together it was felt appropriate to bury them together. He may even have been a slave, dispatched to accompany his dead master.

Having laid the pair to rest, the burial party sank a large wooden post into the ground to mark the spot, then covered the grave with sandstone blocks. Perhaps the post was painted or carved so that any passers-by would be reminded they were in the presence of brave men.

But if the double grave was impressive it was as nothing compared to the discoveries revealed by the Biddles’ re-excavation of a mound in the nearby vicarage garden. First disturbed by a labourer in 1686, and then again in both the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it turned out to have once been a stone-built tomb or mausoleum erected by Mercian Anglo-Saxons. Discovery of four silver pennies among the rest of the remains revealed the building had been reworked and reused by Vikings during their occupation of Repton. Coin specialists established that three of the coins could have been made no earlier than 872, while the fourth was securely dated to 873/4.

The workman who opened the mound in 1686 reported finding a stone coffin containing a ‘Humane body nine foot long’ surrounded by 100 skeletons, arranged ‘with their feet pointing to the stone coffin’. When the Biddles re-excavated the site they found the disarticulated remains of at least 249 individuals, the bones originally stacked around the stone foundations of the Anglo-Saxon tomb. The central burial described in the
seventeenth century had not survived but the Biddles concluded that the disarticulated bones had indeed been stacked on all four sides of it, so that the tomb was made into a charnel house. Before the warriors sealed the mass burial of their honoured dead – with stone slabs, a mound of earth and a kerb of stones – it appears they sacrificed four young people and placed their bodies close by the rest. Analysis of the bones revealed the occupants of the burial were predominantly male – over 80 per cent – and of strikingly robust build. The female remains were rather different, and deemed Anglo-Saxon rather than Viking.

It is the Biddles’ conclusion that the central burial was that of Ivarr himself – also known as Ivarr the Boneless. Having made himself a king in Ireland, it seems he may subsequently have been among the first leaders of the Great Heathen Army that so terrorised and dominated England. Ivarr died in 873 and at least one of the sagas records that he was laid to rest in England, ‘in the manner of former times’. The precise circumstances and consequences of Ivarr’s death remain unknown, but surely it is tempting to imagine that the loss of an exceptional and charismatic leader prompted much soul-searching on the part of the men he left behind, especially those of high rank. The people whose bones were stacked around his coffin were Viking men (together perhaps with the local women they had taken for wives) who had lost their lives during the campaigns of the army and been originally buried elsewhere. It seems Ivarr’s death prompted the collection of those scattered dead so their bones might be interred a second time around the remains of their leader.